BY PHILLIP PINA and RANDY TUCKER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Today, those presents under the tree look as if they were selected and wrapped with great care and thought.
But yesterday, chances are, they were the target of the annual mad dash by last-minute holiday shoppers.
Gift givers, many of them men, filled Tristate stores Thursday finalizing their Christmas purchases. They hunched over the glass counters at the downtown Cincinnati Tiffany & Co. store and rifled through the sales racks at the Florence Meijer.
Excuses ranged from busy schedules to newfound holiday spirit. And whether it was diamond rings or sweaters, they were buying. "It has been a great day," said Chuck Doan, a team leader at the Florence Meijer. Customer traffic at the 24-hour store really picked up late Wednesday after the malls had closed and didn't let up, he said.
As the Christmas Day deadline neared, though, there didn't seem to be any panicking, he said. The late shoppers seemed to know what they wanted and what they were doing.
A trip through many stores Thursday revealed that many were men. In fact, a survey of 1,000 adults taken by the
International Mass Retail Association from Friday through Monday found that nearly half of all women had finished their shopping, compared with 37 percent of men. And 17 percent of men said they had not yet started.
David Kruzner, who lives in the Triple Crown subdivision in Kentucky, was one of about a dozen men buying gifts Thursday at Tiffany about an hour before the store closed at 4 p.m.
"I travel all the time, and this just worked out such that I had one gift left to get for my wife," said Mr. Kruzner, who bought his wife an ornate diamond ring. "I knew I wanted to get her something special, so I wandered in here."
There can be advantages to waiting until the day before Christmas to buy gifts, Mr. Kruzner said.
"You get a lot of the sales."
But, Mr. Kruzner conceded, "This (Tiffany) would be the exception." George Tapke of Terrace Park, who also was browsing around Tiffany's just before closing, said business and other commitments typically force him to postpone his Christmas shopping until the last minute. Mr. Tapke said he generally does much of his Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve because, "It's an easy time for me to go. I always get the day off."
Bill Rush of Colerain Township says he makes it a point to do at least some of his Christmas shopping at the last minute, because it "puts me in the Christmas spirit.
"Even when I get stuff early, I still kind of want to come downtown and get something late," Mr. Rush said. "I just enjoy it."
Mr. Rush wrapped up his Christmas shopping about 3:30 p.m. Thursday after picking up some stocking stuffers at the Fountain Square Lazarus downtown.
